Dark Souls II - Preview @ Player Attack

The demo we saw incorporated the now infamous Mirror Knight. When I saw the it, the QA analyst showing the game had beaten him only once in two days, and no journalists had beaten him at all. They were offering all kinds of prizes, but to no avail.

The Mirror Knight as we saw him was terrifying. He moved smoothly - thanks to new motion capture animations being used in Dark Souls 2 for the first time - and very quickly. And true to their descriptions of the new AI, as soon as the player tried to heal, the Mirror Knight changed his behaviour and charged straight for him.

The conceit of the Mirror Knight is a clever one: having a second knight break through the mirrored shield of the first. Even more terrifying is how this will work in the final game. The knight that breaks through the mirror won't be AI controlled, he will be another player, invading your world.

We pushed for more details: How many times would this occur in the game? How would it work? What other ideas did they have for multiplayer? The developers just smiled and refused to answer.

Like so much else in the Souls games, they want us to find out the hard way. Clearly, Dark Souls 2 is much improved - it’s got stunning graphics, smooth animations and lots of little fixes to exploits and bugs from the first two games. It also has improved AI and as many changes as possible to make the experience even harder. As for the PvP changes? Well, I imagine we’ll see for ourselves through a mirrored shield some time next year.